


outside of that

by dissembler



Category: Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Desperation, Dubious Consent, Face-Fucking, First Time Together, M/M, Pre-Canon, Rough Sex, Threats, exchange treat, face-slapping, transactional sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:46:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissembler/pseuds/dissembler
Summary: Sidney learns the going rate.
Relationships: Sidney Falco/J. J. Hunsecker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	outside of that

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



> I saw your bonus smut prompts and just had to have a go at a few of them!
> 
> This is set way before the film, before the horrible favor, this is Sidney's first real glimpse at one way of dealing with J.J. Hunsecker. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title is the title of a horrible song from the 1920s about a horrible relationship.

Sidney’s nails’ll be to be down to the quick if this cab doesn’t change up a gear and get him to J.J.’s faster. People notice that, everyone knows that there’s no use in a nervous press agent; if your nails are bit they aren’t going to bite. Not that it’ll make a difference after tonight anyway, if this doesn’t work. Stupid old bastard, trying a new set before the old one had lost its lustre. Just Sidney’s luck that a blessed stretch of easy road had to end in this mess, a total bomb. Wreckage. His client dead on arrival and J.J.’s the only hope he has of steering his client’s ship and his own away from the rocks of ruin.

The time between cab ride ending and his jab at the doorbell is interminable but then it’s over, then J.J. Hunsecker is looming in the doorway, still in his coat and glaring. He doesn’t say a thing, just turns on his heel and marches back to his study and Sidney follows, shoulders hunched, eyes scanning the apartment like the shadows might coalesce and trip him. Hobbled from the starting blocks, this night just keeps on giving.

J.J. stops just in front of his desk, the light angled wrong where he’d pushed it to get to the door, and picks up his cigarette from the tray for a single drag before he sets it back down.

“J.J.,” tries Sidney, and hardly finishes the final ‘jay’ before the man has him by the tie, whirled around and pushed back so the hard edge of this swanky desk is digging into his ass and he can’t go anywhere.

“You interrupted my thoughts, Sidney.”

He’s dead. “I’m sorry, J.J.”

“What is it that you come in person without invitation? It surely must be something big, Sidney.”

“I need you to soften some edges for a client of mine.”

J.J. loosens his grip on the tie but doesn’t let go, or step back. He just smiles and says the name.

“You heard.” Sidney shifts, tries to displace the hand and get out of the cage he’s found himself in. “I’d hoped I’d beaten the talk.”

“I heard,” says J.J. wryly. “And I’m waiting to hear more. Patient as Job.”

Sure, Sidney thinks, if Job’s patience was tied with a slip-knot. “He’s a good guy, J.J., he just had a bum set is all. Tomorrow night he goes back to the old one – which still knocks them dead in the aisles, by the way – and sends tonight’s garbage back to the drawing board. I promise.”

“Oh, you promise.” It isn’t a question. J.J. brings up the other hand and fixes Sidney’s tie, still not letting go. 

“Yeah,” says Sidney, spooked, and he tries now to properly pull away. He has his hands hovering inches from J.J.’s coat sleeves. Not touching, not yet, he isn’t suicidal, just a show of intent.

J.J. pulls back a little but doesn’t let him get far, waits instead until only the very tip of Sidney’s tie is left to slide through his fingers before he tightens his grip again and reels him back in. “And just where do you think you’re going, Sidney?” he asks, his teacher’s voice, the voice he uses preaching on the T.V. “This is a request of some magnitude. Usually all you ask is that I mention a client of yours, or that I praise what was at best only good. Those last items that I do for you are fibs, Sidney, though no great harm is done to my reputation by them. But to be kind to a man who simply fell apart live on his stage?” He lets this linger, disapproving.

“I’ll owe you one,” Sidney says, and it’s the wrong thing. J.J.’s eyes go dark and then fill with lightning.

“You already owe me several,” says J.J., loud and harsh in the empty open plan space. The rest he hisses: “It occurs, in fact, that this past winter I have done you many a good turn. And what have I received for my pains? Nothing. How do you square that, Sidney?”

Sidney can feel fear dripping down his spine like rainwater. “What do you want, J.J.?” he asks. 

Wrong thing again. The backhand catches him off guard, sets his head spinning. He counts his lucky stars – conveniently circling his skull from the hit – that J.J. doesn’t wear rings, though he thinks his lip’s going to get fat all the same.

Before he has a chance to do anything but bring a hand up to his face in surprise, J.J.’s moving. There’s a rustle and clink and Sidney looks down to see that J.J.’s dropped a hand to his belt, is undoing the buckle and unzipping his pants, pushing down his boxers, and then he lets go of Sidney’s tie to bat his hand away and grab his hair instead, forcing him down to his knees.

Jesus, he’s a prize idiot for only seeing what’s ahead for him when his field of vision’s taken up whole by another man’s dick. If his jaw didn’t already ache from being slapped around it’d have started, pre-emptive, at the sight of this. This dick, and Sidney’s not exactly seen none in his life, is a monster, ruddy and livid and long, jutting out of a thatch of hair, and Hunsecker ain’t jewish so the foreskin’s stretched tight around the soda can shaft, locked and loaded.

J.J. doesn’t say a thing but Sidney’s got the desk at the back of his head and no way out and he figures the best he can do at this moment is make it good, sell it right. He’s never sucked a cock, just jerked a few off, but he’s had his own sucked before and he reckons he remembers some of the tricks. He leans in and laps away the bead of spunk at the slit, a little shocked when the thing just fills out more, curves up. 

He picks up a hand and grips the base, turning his head to lick a stripe along the vein on the underside before coming back to take the head into his mouth, an ‘o’ of suction around the crown. He’s all ready to take it slow, to perfect it but J.J., it turns out, has other plans and the hand in his hair releases to take up his chin, rough, instead.

That’s all the warning he gets, just that sudden movement, then he’s being held in place where he’s useful and J.J.’s hips are coming at him slow but unlikely to stop, the length of him sliding over Sidney’s tongue until the head’s jabbing the back of his throat. 

His eyes spring up wet and he sucks in a breath through his nose, taking initiative to suck a little until J.J.’s grip loosens just enough to let him come back up for air. He bobs back and forth, swirling his tongue around the throbbing shaft when he remembers to, and on one pass back, when his lips are just kissing the tip J.J. shifts his hand again to slip his thumb in alongside.

Sidney feels his lip split at the stretch, feels the trickle of blood hot down his chin, and his brain must’ve dredged up, by necessity, the way to make his jaw pop because it still hurts, for sure, but less as J.J. pumps his hips. With all the brutality of the crossed out lines on his copy, he’s molding Sidney into what he wants and all Sidney can do is take it, salty and bitter and too much.

He chokes on it, obedient, because to tap out would hurt his chances, he knows it like he knows this whole thing’s some sick test. Making sure there’s nothing Sidney Falco wouldn’t do. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s more. There’s the shadow of something in J.J.’s face when Sidney looks up that looks like real need, real crushing need. Like desperation. Sidney wonders how many drew the line at this, if any were even asked. If he’s the first one J.J.’s wanted like this. 

He grinds the heel of his palm against the tent in his pants that’s his own dick filling at that. He slips his eyes closed, but J.J. must see something of his thoughts in them before he manages because his grip tightens, digging in until bright spots of pain bloom on Sidney’s jawbone. He yanks Sidney to him at the same time as he rams his hips forward, and with one brutal thrust his fat cockhead jabs past the back of Sidney’s throat and down to what must be his lungs for the way the air’s all punched out of him. 

Sidney chokes, gagging and gasping as it burns, his lashes sticking together in clumps that make it heavy as his eyes open fast. His hands flutter against J.J.’s thighs, out of his control, his fight or flight response kicking in as he’s unable to breathe.

Then he’s getting dragged back, coughing and spluttering and barely given the chance to take a decent breath before J.J. drives back in, sending Sidney’s skull slamming against the desk. It keeps on like this, sharp ache and black on the edges of his vision, and the sting of his lip as it splits even further, and the ooze of bloody saliva down his chin. Sidney reduced to something like the wooden wall of the stall, a thing to be gone through to get to pleasure, the hole with none of the glory.

But there is glory, there’s got to be. The glory’s in the hitching breaths J.J.’s giving, the groans from above, the hand holding his jaw like a vise. All of the things that speak of a man who hasn’t gotten his rocks off in the way he wants for too long. A man who’s so furious and so grateful that it might just make him stupid.

J.J. drops the hand from Sidney’s chin to palm at his neck, feeling himself as he brutalises the cords and muscle and sinew of Sidney’s throat, finally pressing just too hard and at the spasm of Sidney’s choked swallowing he goes off like a rocket, drowning Sidney in come so’s he hardly notices the hands letting up and J.J stepping back.

Sidney pitches himself to the side, free and gasping at the air in case it disappears again. He coughs and it hurts like hell, so bad he doesn’t even want to try talking. He wipes the back of his hand against his mouth and doesn’t care to look at what smears there. He looks at J.J., wounded, and he hopes that this wasn’t a freebie. If he’s a hooker, he’s going to be top shelf, and he’ll get his asking price.

J.J. tucks himself away, runs a hand through his hair, re-rights his glasses, as Sidney keeps on gasping in air by the excruciating, humiliating lungful at his feet. He’s still a minute, then he leans down, touching his fingertips softly now to the tender skin of Sidney’s jaw, angling his face up.

“Service without reward is punishment,” says J.J., real gentle and looking now like none of this ever happened. “Your man will be no worse for wear from me, Sidney.”

Sidney should’ve set the price higher, but he drags his sorry lips into some facsimile of a grateful smile and accepts the proffered hand. 

  
J.J. lets him freshen up in his guest bath before throwing him out. Sidney guesses he’s good like that. He looks a mess, his mouth swollen red, blood and tear tracks down his skin. Mussed up hair. Ruined tie knot.

He guesses the bruises must be coming up right about when the cabbie who pulls over to take him home double takes, eyes wide. The look of pity only deepens when he rasps out his address.

Sally’s gone at least, when he finally drags his sorry carcass through the door. Too early for her to have clocked off on her own and sure thing there’s a note on the desk that says J.J. called and told her to take the night, to come in around noon. She’s told him to call if he needs to.

Sidney crumples up the note and chokes down an aspirin, wincing at the pain of swallowing and then wincing more when the wince itself hurts, and then he crawls into bed.

  
Noon on the dot she screams when she sees him. But she brought the papers, and as his eyes flick over the column he figures he can live with the state of himself. An awful thing done for terrible knowledge. And knowledge is power, isn’t it? Or almost, maybe. Maybe this is just the lower rungs of the ladder. 

But Sidney Falco can climb. 

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT NOTES: The consent here is very dubious, almost non-existent. Sidney would like to not be doing what he’s doing, and would appreciate not having things done to him so violently. But he’s here and he’s going to make the most of it.


End file.
